Governor Kate Brown on activism: Oregon’s governor garnered national attention with a story in The New Yorker where she encouraged citizen activism and was framed as a progressive leader and “radical feminist governor.”

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More trouble with “more enforcement”: Last week we shared how white people have a much easier time arguing down traffic violations in court. This week there’s more bad news: An in-depth probe of Multnomah County police records reveals that people with black or brown skin are charged much higher fines (up to 15 times the amount) than whites for numerous minor violations — including things like, “Failing to cross the street at a right angle,” “jaywalking” and “walking in the road.”

Powerful woman: A small farmer from Chile rides her bike 18 miles a day. No big whoop until you realize she’s 90-years old.

Fat bikes, fat profits: We are loving all the stories about fatbiking’s rise in popularity — including this major national NPR story that focuses on Minnesota’s love of the big tires.

Safer trucks: A man was killed in a right-hook collision with a box truck this morning. In related news, the City of Seattle just announced that all its fleet trucks must have side guards to reduce risk of people falling under wheels.

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A driver suspected of fleeing after he struck two pedestrians — one of whom later died — was booked into Clark County jail on criminal charges.

Ernesto N. Estrada-Tapia, 24, of Vancouver, is accused of hit and run and vehicular homicide while driving under the influence in connection with the Jan. 11 collision in Vancouver. Court records show Estrada-Tapia is on probation in connection with a 2016 crash in North Portland.

If you read the last two paragraphs of the Tribune article, they say that at least part of the disparity may come from default judgements, that is, where the defendant fails to show up for their hearing and therefore loses by default.

Automated enforcement is unlikely to change who goes to court to challenge their ticket, and so is unlikely to fix the disparity.

The article also points out the fact that enforcement is focused in neighborhoods where more POC live. This is wrong; it needs to be distributed evenly throughout the jurisdiction to create safe driving habits, not just focused where bad driving habits combine with other factors to create crashes. The current “data-driven” policing is creating some of the problem with uneven enforcement.

In Portland, at least, you can contest a parking citation simply by writing a letter to the court. It’s anecdotal, but based on a pretty decent sample size (a couple mine, but mostly acquaintances) I can say that if you write any sort of letter, you’re virtually guaranteed the judge will knock half the fine off.

I wonder if writing such a letter is an option that different demographics take advantage of at different rates, for whatever reason–awareness, language barriers, etc. It’d probably account for the bulk of the disparity.

Interesting piece on the mapping bike routes in the style of subway routes. The concept leads to very legible maps, but I question how useful they are. On transit, you only need to know where to get on and where to get off. When planning a bike route, you can enter and exit from any point. The route itself is likely to jog over a block every few blocks. Bike routes frequently disappear with no clear signage indicating if they resume or not or what options you may have, and wayfinding signs along them are sparse, tiny, and not illuminated. There is a damn good reason bike maps are full of detail: you need the detail to figure out where to go because bike routes suck!

A lot of the 26% “interested but concerned” bicycle people now use their cell phones to navigate along unfamiliar neighborhood back streets, whether driving or biking. I think the idea of these maps is to give a bearing of where to go, which direction, and to which landmark, and the cell phone will tell them which street to use, when to turn right, etc. If you use the bike feature on Google maps, it will often navigate based upon where other cyclists have gone as well as on routes listed in the local bike master plan (including many not yet built.) It’s another tool.

No, it’s something we’ve had forced upon us by the group of people who insist on using methods of conveyance that are outside of normal human scale and proportion that have negative effects on their ability to perceive their environment.

It’s not just “a group”… it’s most of society, and probably even most readers of this blog. And even with that disqualification, I disagree. When I ride at night, I am thankful for pedestrians who have some illumination or reflectivity when they cross the street. Some people are simply very hard to see.

Since those other countries have no say in our urban form or road design standards, I think their opinion on this matter is not relevant. So when I say society, I mean specifically American society. Which was clear from the context.

Since the (vast) majority of Americans regularly travels faster than their senses can process information, your own logic suggests clothing color does in fact matter. Also, your accusations of shaming and favoring autos is fake news.

Hello, Kitty Since those other countries have no say in our urban form or road design standards, I think their opinion on this matter is not relevant. So when I say society, I mean specifically American society. Which was clear from the context. Since the (vast) majority of Americans regularly travels faster than their senses can process information, your own logic suggests clothing color does in fact matter. Also, your accusations of shaming and favoring autos is fake news.Recommended 2

People are operating those cars and trucks, and it’s entirely up to them to operate them at speeds at which they can mentally process visual information. It is not anyone else’s responsibility to accommodate people who refuse to act in a safe manner in public. The fact that you think so is based on ingrained car culture, which is wrong and should be changed. Any argument to the contrary, regardless of how unconscious you are of your bias, is wrong.

Sure, yes, of course; drivers are responsible for operating their vehicles in a safe manner. Who would disagree?

Which begs the question: What is “safe”? Even in the absence of motor vehicles, the streets would not be perfectly “safe”. There will always be a tradeoff between safety and other values, and in the case of our transportation network we (collectively) have decided that we are willing to accept some degree of risk in exchange for convenience, power, speed, what have you.

Like you, I do not agree with where we’ve drawn the line. Over the past 20 years, I have worked on a number of speed reduction efforts, with various degrees of success (including Powell, lower Hawthorne, SE 20th, SE 26th, et al).

But I also understand the tradeoffs, and that not everyone agrees with where the line should be drawn. Recognizing that many people might disagree with me does not make me an apologist, but it does cause me to reject, out of hand, whackball solutions like putting metal posts in the street to slow traffic, or simplistic ideas like “let’s just lower all the speed limits” which are obviously non-starters and probably wouldn’t work anyway. Changing behavior requires some degree of consensus, and you can’t just wish that into being.

And I’m sorry, but I do not accept absolutist positions such as yours. “Any argument to the contrary… is wrong”. Well, no, it’s not.

If you really don’t see the difference between the level of safety hazards present on a street with cars versus one without, there really is no sense of logic to appeal to and it becomes clear that you’re engaging in a meaningless back and forth in which your only real intention is to get a last word in, no matter how nonsensical it might be.

Yes. Because it doesn’t work like that. Drivers don’t “look for high-viz”; they look for other people (or not), and if they don’t see them, they won’t avoid striking them. We had decades and decades when high-viz basically didn’t exist. Were there fewer collisions then? Are there any precautions cyclists could take that wouldn’t just train drivers to be less careful? Your line of reasoning just doesn’t compute.

I should have said “drivers don’t look for people”. Because hi-viz screams at them, they don’t have to look (while driving at least 10mph too fast.) Freely-roaming sheep would help set the tone, but we might need to start with electric ones to keep the death toll in check.

I’ve the effects of this thought process. At the end of the day it doesn’t matter that I am in all Neon Pink, if people don’t look or don’t care that they are double parked in the bike lane outside the Burnside Sizzle pie I could still end up flat as a pizza. Most people who complain to me about how pedestrian’s and cyclists should wear hi-viz normally respond to my question ‘do you wear hi-viz when you park your car and walk a block and cross the street to enter Powell’s books?” With a resounding, ‘oh, no.’ Because we are all people who walk (ish-ada-etc) and everyone owns a black jacket.

I’ve got an older 2007 Metro, ‘Bike There!’ map. Lots of detail, all streets are named…several other city and Washington County maps in my collection, don’t have info as extensive. Because of that detail, much of it very small, on the road, this map would be difficult, though possible to use. For at home route planning, or finding street locations, it’s great! I don’t have a PBOT map…I’m curious to take a look at one.

And to be fair…if subway systems were built like bikeway systems…then subway maps would have a lot of broken connections/ barriers to then route users through…like adding surface street connections and station stairs or broken elevators/ escalators, etc.

If any particular judge is handing out different punishments for similar crimes committed in similar circumstances, based on race, then that is a huge problem, and that judge should be sanctioned or removed.

Engineering needs to get a tape measure and check the width of a car. Most of our lanes have enough space for a bus and a jersey barrier next to the bike lane, but there’s no jersey barrier because engineers insist on giving drivers an extra 2ft of “shy space”. Until drivers are whining about feeling fenced-in and being constantly afraid of scraping their paint, they will continue speeding.